


love shouldn't burn

by timetrees



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Marvel Jotunn Culture, Other, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), References to Agent of Asgard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-06 16:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16391630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetrees/pseuds/timetrees
Summary: Loki woke up in a small space that would have been dark if not for the fire that chained her wrists and bled from her eyes.A post-IW fic detailing a weird journey through Jotunheim in an attempt to undo the damage Thanos caused.





	1. i've been a forest fire

**Author's Note:**

> fic title is from SQUARE by mitski.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS (for the whole fic):  
> • some references of child abuse in regards to laufey  
> • talk of transphobia and one shown moment of transphobia (I'll warn in the chapter)  
> • discussion of loki's death (so choking tw)  
> • drinking.
> 
> here's the first disclaimer. i wrote this fic to have fun! i needed to get back into the groove of writing before nanowrimo and so i wrote a fun fic about loki. you might read this fic and go, "this is really weird and i don't understand if you're making jokes or not" or "none of this makes sense, what's with this plot, you're skipping the important bits" or whatever and the point is, i don't care. feel free to comment though because i'd love to see your other thoughts!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is from A BURNING HILL by mitski

Loki was burning.

She’d burned once before, years ago. She’d killed herself and thrown herself to the void and the void had taken her, burned her to a crisp and spat her back out into Thanos’s hands –– her killer’s hands, on her neck and in her mind. She didn’t remember all of the beginning of it anymore, save for in her dreams, but she knew what happened.

After the New York invasion, after Thor had muzzled her like a dog and taken her to be dealt with in Asgard’s halls, she’d been given the chance to hear what the people said about her.

“It’s a shame,” said a guard who’d served outside the the castle’s entrance gate for as long as she could remember. She knew his face but not his name. “What happened to him?”

“Burned away his conscience,” said a house healer who’d always been too gossipy. “Did you hear what he did?”

The Loki of the past, of course, had no mouth. He limped along with the man who was leading him, gripping his arm too tightly, only sparing the guard and the healer a dirty glance. But he couldn’t judge her words. The burning metaphor was all too accurate.

And now Loki couldn’t breathe, and she wasn’t sure why. It made sense in the back of her head, but she couldn’t push the reason forward to really hear it. She couldn’t gasp or cry through her crushed throat and her bloody eyes, and she had no thoughts of her own. She never had.

Was she dead? She couldn’t figure it out. Was this what it’d been like last time?

She screamed. Only a wheeze came out.

 

She couldn’t write out the things she’d done. The things she’d done for herself, for Thanos, for anyone, and she couldn’t blame it on anyone, either, because what would she say? There was no eye for an eye when Loki was the one socketing herself.

She couldn’t blame it on Thanos. Not because he wasn’t at fault, but because –– she couldn’t tell Thor. She couldn’t have him imagine her, chained in the dark, whispered to, told _you were pushed, remember? You didn’t let go. You aren’t a coward._

She’d never believed it but she’d clung to that hope anyway.

Loki wondered if he thought her suicide was a trick. It hadn’t been. She’d been terribly disappointed to realize she wouldn’t be dead for long – and even more so when she realized what her life had become. She’d played too many tricks and told too many lies; who would ever believe in her now?

Now she was just stuck. Stuck in her lies and in Odin’s lies and in her hate and fear, even her own shape. She wanted to blame Odin – she did blame Odin – but she couldn’t deny she’d brought some of it on herself.

She was lost.

 

Loki, at the age of two hundred and nine, sat on the floor of one of the Grand Rooms of Asgard’s royal palace. They were alone, save for a fledgling magpie they’d rescued from a wild animal in their backyard, which was more of a forest than a lawn.

Loki was singing a song to the bird – one without words, just impressions of them, a language carved in runes and mostly forgotten. The bird hopped around, unaware of any meaning in the song.

Thor, a century their elder and generally the more accomplished brother in Asgardian standards, opened the door to the Grand Room, which was possibly just a room, because Loki had found themself calling every room in the palace Grand. He studied Loki (who didn’t notice him) for only a moment before speaking.

“Are you bewitching a bird, Loki?”

Loki startled like a cat and looked over at their brother. They relaxed. “I’m not a witch,” they pointed out.

“You dress like one,” Thor said. He grinned at Loki, who rolled their eyes. “What are you doing with the bird, then?”

“I don’t know,” Loki said, and traced a finger along the complacent magpie’s beak. “I like it. It’s a magpie. It’s cute, right?”

Thor sat down, cross-legged across from Loki. “It is,” he agreed, reaching a hand forward and placing it on the floor in front of the bird, like it was a cat who needed to inspect it. “Mother won’t let you keep it.”

Loki bit their lip. “She doesn’t need to know,” they said, as if they could ever keep such a thing from Frigga.

“Sure,” Thor said, clearly lacking any faith in Loki’s ability to lie to their mother.

Loki, similarly unfaithful, hid the magpie in their room and left for the library it to find a book on birding. Frigga never did find out, or at least never confronted him, and the magpie died only three months later. Thor found Loki upset and fighting back tears and hugged him, and they never spoke about the bird again.

After that, magpies followed Loki, cawing after him wherever he went. Frigga noticed it on one of their walks, and told him that Odin had the same problem with ravens. Loki had nodded and smiled like he was proud of being the same as his father and not ashamed of his careless bird keeping. He was sure that the other birds knew what a failure he’d been.

He’d given the magpie a funeral the night after it died. He sat alone on the shore of a river as he sent the burning bird down the stream. He hadn’t asked Thor to come, but he was upset anyway that he wasn't there.

The bird burned.

Loki did too.

 

Some time after she’d lost hope in ever returning, Loki woke up in a small space that would have been dark if not for the fire that chained her wrists and bled from her eyes. She’d been in the middle of a scream when she awoke; the sound died out but its intent remained, just scratchiness and gasping.

She was trapped, on fire, and alone.

Loki didn’t know how long she stayed there. Her heart and mind were racing – she could barely think, and her grasp on time was already subpar. It seemed like hours or minutes, which to her felt the same, before she could hear voices.

Or something like voices. She couldn’t register what they were saying, or where they were coming from, but she knew they were there.

She banged on the top of whatever she was in and yelled. She didn’t actually _say_ anything – she wasn’t sure how anymore – but gave a sort of _impression_ of words that would surely translate to ‘get me out of this damn coffin’.

The strangers continued to mutter amongst themselves, for far too long in Loki’s burning mind, and she felt the lid shift, but not open. Another minute of restless not-breathing, and finally––

The casket opened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :-)  
> next chapter should be out today, too, bc i don't like this chapter lol. i actually rewrote parts of this chapter because i wasn't happy with it, and i still don't care for it, but i don't really care enough to try again.
> 
> comments appreciated!! my tumblr is timetrees.tumblr.com


	2. crying set me free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It says LOKI. And, uh, under it, TRICKSTER, then SHAPESHIFTER, then TAMER OF MONSTERS, MOTHER OF GODS. MOON QUEEN AND WANDERER.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;-)  
> uhh warnings for this chapter... this is where the implied/referenced child abuse irt laufey starts, esp since this is in helblindi's point of view. if you guys don't know who helblindi is, he's one of loki's brothers in the myths and was mentioned once or twice in the comics, though i don't think he was shown.

Helblindi hadn’t expected much from the cave. It was a side quest. A golden casket rising out of the ground, slowly, unopenable to anyone but those of royal blood. Helblindi didn’t even believe in royal blood. His blood was as red as any other Jötunn’s – what was different about it?

Býleistr was the one to talk him into it, as he did with everyone. Býleistr was a child and a prince, and usually too nice to deny, even if he _had_ eaten the last of the chicken Helblindi had bought from the last market. With his own money, too, not the Queen’s. Bastard.

“There may be something interesting there,” Bý said. “I mean, golden coffins. Real gold, do you think?”

“Maybe,” Helblindi grunted, moving into the mouth of the cave.

They were in the ice mountains of Jötunheim, not far from where they’d emerged from below the ground. Up here, the ice and snow was melting at an even faster pace than the rest of above ground Jötunheim. Helblindi wasn’t sure if that was due to something in the cave or just the Casket’s absence hitting the higher regions harder than the rest, but he figured he would find out.

And, of course, he did.

It was indeed a golden coffin, with heat radiating from it, and words etched into it, not at the right angle to read. It wasn’t the right size for a full-grown Jötunn’s body – it was the size of a child, really, or an exceptionally short teenager. So Helblindi figured it was a child’s coffin, snuck in with magic, possibly from a sorceress mother who’d lost their child.

“What,” Býleistr said, furrowing his eyebrows, “is that?”

“A coffin,” said Helblindi. “Keep up.”

“I _know_ that,” Bý said. “But it’s… hot. What’s wrong with it?”

Helblindi hadn’t actually considered that. He’d been born far after the ice ages of Jötunheim, when they’d still had the casket and they hadn’t been forced underground in fear of the thawed-out sun melting them. Jotnar, especially wealthy or magical ones who could afford accidents, _did_ use fire, but in controlled methods, to cook or smoke weed.

Helblindi didn’t know if he’d ever felt so _hot_ in his (admittedly short) life.

He took a step closer, trying to catch the words on the top of the lid without burning himself. That was when the screaming started.

The creature in the coffin wasn’t screaming words, or anything useful, like ‘I was buried alive’ or ‘I’m melting right now in this coffin’. It was just screaming. It was annoying and unuseful.

Býleistr covered his ears.

“Don’t overreact,” Helblindi told him as he stepped away from the coffin. “You can barely hear it.”

“Can so,” Bý said. Then: “Should we… open it?”

“And let the heat out? No.”

“But there’s a _person_ inside.”

Helblindi sighed. “You’re a terrible Frost Giant,” he said, faux-dramatic. “You have to learn to be savage like they say, brother.”

Býleistr rolled the black of his eyes. “I’m opening it,” he said, and, wincing, stepped forward to the searing casket. “It says – did you already read it?”

“No.”

“It says LOKI. And, uh, under it, TRICKSTER, then SHAPESHIFTER, then TAMER OF MONSTERS, MOTHER OF GODS. MOON QUEEN AND WANDERER.”

“Poetic,” said Helblindi, who had not heard of a woman called Loki, although the name sounded familiar. Had Laufey – curse his dead soul – mentioned it once? Maybe.

“I’m going to open it,” Býleistr said. “Hey, what’s a moon queen?”

Helblindi shrugged. “Queen of a moon, I guess,” he offered. “Open it.”

Býleistr reached toward the underside of the lid, trying to get a grasp. “Ow!” he said. “Ow! Shit. That hurts.”

“Good job,” said Helblindi, who was legally obligated to make fun of Býleistr. Older brother duties. “Here, take my glove.”

He peeled off the dragon-leather glove he wore on his right hand and handed it to Býleistr. Býleistr used it to wedge his fingers between the two sides of the coffin and flung it open.

Inside was a Jötunn on fire. Smoke billowed from her nose; her hands were wreathed in flames. She wasn’t screaming anymore. Her voice came out like a whine as she moved, almost immediately after being freed, to sit in the coffin. She was shaking.

Her hair was dark, wet with sweat and hanging in her face, but Helblindi could see the bright red eyes beneath her bangs.

Býleistr yelped and leaped back, away from the open flames, and stumbled into Helblindi.

The Jötunn grabbed the golden frame of the coffin and pushed herself up. It didn’t work perfectly, and she ended up dragging herself out the side and onto the floor. She laid there almost still, on her elbows and hips trying to breathe.

“Are you okay?” asked Býleistr as he edged away from her.

“She’s on _fire_ ,” Helblindi said. “Or something. Actually, I don’t think fire works like this. What’s wrong with her?”

“How should I know?” Bý snapped. “Throw some snow on her. Freeze her in ice.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” the woman snapped; it was the first real thing they’d heard her say. “Get away. I…” she stopped for a moment, just shaking and clenching her fist. Helblindi thought he heard her say _burning_.

“Are you okay?” Býleistr repeated. “Do you need help? My name is Býleistr.”

“Bý,” Helblindi warned. The kid was always too nice – it was going to be the death of him. “She said get away.”

“She?” the woman repeated, seeming dazed. The fire was beginning to die down, though it still flared up as she breathed. “I… right. Wait. Who are you?”

“I just said,” Býleistr mumbled. “I’m Býleistr Fárbautison. That’s Helblindi – my brother.”

Helblindi found himself annoyed by Býleistr giving away their identities so easily. Laufey was no more, and Fárbauti wasn’t about to have any more children if they died – and despite her small size, Helblindi could tell she could easily harm them if she felt the need. Especially with all that _fire_.

“Fárbautison,” the woman muttered, and glanced up at him for only a second, returning to fix her gaze on the floor again. She stared at her clenched hand for a long time without speaking or moving. “I’m a Jötunn,” she said to herself.

Býleistr looked at Helblindi. Helblindi shrugged.

“...Yeah?” Býleistr ventured. “Um. This is Jötunheim. We’re all Jötnar here.”

“Bý,” Helblindi warned.

“I’m trying to help,” Býleistr said to him, shoulders raised defensively. “There’s something wrong with her.”

“I can hear you,” the Jötunn woman said, finally rising. The fire still flamed at her wrists and her fingertips, but most of it had died down and the heat coming off of her was barely recognizable. “Why am I – where am I?”

“The Jervastind mountain,” Helblindi said. “Well. Inside the mountain.”

“A cave,” the woman said, looking around wildly, like she hadn’t even noticed her surroundings. She was breathing heavily now, panicking.

“I’m leaving,” Helblindi said. He didn’t move.

“Oh, Ymir,” Býleistr muttered, clearly directing his words at Helblindi. Helblindi glared. Býleistr said to the woman, “Is your name Loki?”

At this she stopped breathing altogether, though only for a moment. “Yes,” she answered slowly. “How do you know that?”

Helblindi pointed. “It was on your coffin.”

Loki pushed her hair out of her face and leapt up, leaned over to see the words on the coffin. “Trickster, shapeshifter,” she read aloud. “That… sounds like me. I _think_ it sounds like me.” She shook her head violently and turned back to face them.

With her hair out of her face, Helblindi could see her Jötunn markings fully – the clawed lines on her cheekbones and chin, the faint outlines from her hairline to the side of her eyebrow, and a marking on her forehead––

The same symbol on Helblindi’s skin, and Býleistr’s, and their mother’s, though Laufey had lacked it. Fárbauti was the last of the royal Storm giants –– and even she was half-Frost –– and maybe the only fully grown giant with that exact marking. She was certainly the only one that Helblindi knew of.

He looked at his brother, mostly to see if he recognized it. Helblindi had once spent a week in one of Jötunheim’s surviving libraries studying the different markings a Jötunn could have and what they meant of their ancestry, but Býleistr hadn’t came along. Well, Helblindi hadn’t invited him. Still.

Bý frowned with his eyes and mouth, but strangely Loki didn’t seem to notice the similarities in their skins. She was barely looking at them; her head was turned toward them, but her eyes were averted.

“Wait,” Býleistr said. “Who are you?”

If she’d shared the same markings as Laufey, Helblindi wouldn’t have thought twice. He didn’t remember his father ever cheating, but it was possible. Fárbauti, though… he would have known if she’d carried a child, he was sure. Maybe she had a sibling that had survived the last Asgardian–Jötunn war?

Loki frowned at them. “You already know my name,” she said. “Who are you?”

“We already told you,” Helblindi said. “Helblindi and Býleistr. Sons of Fárbauti.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“You don’t know the Queen of Jötunheim?” Býleistr said, too loudly.

“Queen of Jotunheim?” Loki repeated. Then: “Oh no. Wait. Who’s your– your father? I forgot F– Jötnar. Use matronyms.”

“What.” Helblindi said.

Býleistr shifted uncomfortably; Helblindi almost felt sorry for him, seeing the look on his face. “Our father was Laufey.”

Loki looked to the ceiling, for no apparent reason. “Oh, Hel,” she muttered. “Alright then. I suppose that’s – I suppose this is just how my life is going to go now. If I’m alive. This might be Hel.”

“It’s not,” said Býleistr.

“Explain,” said Helblindi at the same time. He’d soured even further from the mention of his father and had no more patience for cave coffins and strange Jötunn runts who looked like him.

Loki sighed and looked vaguely like she regretted being alive. “I’m Loki,” she said reluctantly. “Laufey was my father, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the comics, loki's bio mother fárbauti is sometimes stated to be a storm giant, so i kind of ran with that idea. i have a LOT of worldbuilding on jotunheim actually, and not all of it even shows up in the fic haha. feel free to question. and please comment if you want to !!
> 
> my google doc comments on this fic (in order):  
> • ell e. [9:37 PM Sep 30]: did i just say jotnar smoke weed? well, they do. why? because i'm out rn and i want to be.  
> • ell e. [3:49 PM Oct 3]: jervvasstind is a mountain range in norway.  
> • ell e. [6:09 PM Oct 3]: in 616, fárbauti is sometimes referred to as a storm giant, which i think is fun.
> 
> i find the jotunn markings/lines/whatevr FUN and i dont care if its cringy or pseudo science


	3. the last snowfall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “With magic?” she asked. “Or your quest? I have no intention of angering Thanos right now.”
> 
>  _Again,_ she added in her head, just to be angsty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song for this chapter is THE LAST SNOWFALL by vienna teng. 
> 
> back to loki's pov in this one! oh yeah and mentions/referenced transphobia here wrt odin, who is canonically a bitch

Loki didn’t know what she’d expected to find outside of the coffin, but it certainly wasn’t this. She hadn’t expected Jötunheim, or relatives, or really anything but pain and torture by Thanos’s hand. She didn’t know how Thanos might have found her, but he’d managed it before.

She could still feel his hand on her neck. She could still hear the snap of her bones as she’d died.

“Laufey was your…” Býleistr – the dark haired Jötunn, clearly younger than his brother – trailed off.

The elder brother, the one with white hair half as long as Loki’s, said, “How old are you?”

Loki thought about it. “One thousand fifty-three,” she said. “I think.”

“That’s older than us,” Helblindi said. “Older than the– wait, when was the last Jötunn-Asgardian war?”

“One thousand fifty years ago,” Loki supplied. She was finally beginning to calm down and remember facts as they stood. “Ish. It ended around the time I was born. I never knew Laufey, though – he abandoned me.”

“For being a runt,” assumed Helblindi, who was perhaps three feet taller than Loki even at his young age. Loki pegged him as being three hundred and fifty, which was for an Asgardian the equivalent of a human’s 17th year.

But they were not Asgardian.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m told I was found in a church… suffering and alone. Smaller than… other Jötunn babies. My– my adoptive father took me in after that. I didn’t know Laufey was my father until a few years ago.”

“Lucky you,” Helblindi said. “We’ve known all our lives.”

Loki thought about Odin, telling her _your birthright was to die as a child, cast out onto a frozen rock._ She thought of Odin, saying, _If you aren’t prepared for the life of a woman, Loki, then maybe you shouldn’t try to be one._ Bastard. She was glad he was dead, and she was not going to stop being glad (a lie).

“Right,” she said blankly. “This is… fine. I need to go.”

Thor thought she was dead again. That didn’t seem right – she _had_ been dead, so it wasn’t a matter of error. Thor knew she was dead again. She was dead to Thor again.

Damn, he was probably having a mental breakdown somewhere.

“Go where?” Býleistr asked.

Loki didn’t know what to say. She had no home. She barely had a family. She wouldn’t be welcome on Earth, even if the remaining Asgardians had managed to get to it. If they were alive. She had nothing – nothing, and a Titan that likely still wished her dead.

“Loki?” Býleistr prodded.

She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Why were you in that coffin?” Helblindi asked. “Did someone put you in there? Why were you on fire?”

“I don’t know,” Loki repeated. “I woke up there. I woke up on fire. Burning. I don’t understand it, but I don’t see the point of questioning it.”

The brothers seemed confused by this, and Helblindi gave her a distrusting look, but neither questioned her further.

“So you don’t know where you’re going to go,” Býleistr confirmed. Loki shrugged in assent. “Well, we’re on a quest.”

“Bý,” Helblindi said in an aggrieved sort of way. Loki almost laughed, which for her nowadays was more like exhaling a little louder than normal. Brothers in any family were more of the same, she supposed.

But she didn’t want to think about Thor.

“A quest,” Loki said. “For what purpose?”

“To bring back the… people who disintegrated.”

“Disin– people who what?”

“You didn’t hear about that?”

“No.” How long had she been dead? “What do you mean, they disintegrated? Was it a spell?”

“Don’t know,” Býleistr said.

“We kind of know,” Helblindi corrected. “The Mad Titan. They say he’s assembled the Infinity Stones, figured out a way to do… whatever the Hel he wants, I guess. It's just a rumor. Do you know anything about it?”

Loki, who’d flinched and gritted her teeth just at hearing one of Thanos’s titles, hesitated to answer. “I know of Thanos,” she answered. “He kills half of each world he conquers. Something about… freeing up resources.”

“It’s about resources?” Býleistr asked. “Because all the plants and animals died, too, so… I think that’s… nothing would change, right?”

“Must be embarrassing for Thanos to be worse at economics than a three hundred year old,” Helblindi snarked.

“I’m three twenty-six,” Býleistr corrected.

Now Loki was sure that Jotnar aged differently from Asgardians, because a three-hundred twenty year old would in Asgard be much older than Býleistr seemed to be. She couldn’t ask what the ratio was, of course, because a Jötunn wouldn’t need to.

And she was a Jötunn. Of course.

“Thank you,” Loki said, “for freeing me. But I need to…”

Again she wondered where she could go. Amora was still in Vanaheim, and though their friendship was on and off, Loki would probably be welcome there. And Sigyn – had she been on the Statesman when Thanos came? She’d been moving back and forth from the ship to Amora’s home through portals, so there was a chance she’d survived.

Loki wouldn’t let herself think of the chance that she hadn’t.

Damn it. She was a Jötunn anyway – what chance did _she_ have, that even Sigyn would love her still? That _anyone_ would? No one had seen her true form but Odin, and now these teenage Jötnar, who barely counted because they saw their own faces each day, and their faces were so similar to her’s, too, so they’d basically seen her own even before now.

“You need to…?” Helblindi prompted. Loki curled her lip.

“I need to leave,” she said. “I cannot stay in a cave forever. And you have a quest to go on, don’t you? You can leave. I’ll find my own way off Jötunheim.”

The brothers exchanged looks.

“Uh, no,” Helblindi said. “No, sorry, I actually need more information beyond ‘I woke up in a cave on fire’ and ‘oh we have the same father but it doesn’t matter’. Like, really.”

Loki sighed heavily.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Please?” Býleistr put in.

“Hm. Considering it,” Loki said, and then, when the kid’s expression went to something-like-hopeful, she added: “No.”

Helblindi laughed.

“Shut up, Hel,” Býleistr muttered. Then, louder, like he’d just thought of the insult: “Go to Hel, Hel.”

Oh, how Loki loved children. She really did. They were hilarious and strange and she wanted a dozen, someday, in a possible future where she didn’t die every year or so. Which probably meant she would be a barren, childless woman forever, because she had no hope of continuing to live uninterrupted.

“I don’t really have more information,” she said. “I died. I woke up in that coffin, in this cave. Laufey is my biological father, who abandoned me at birth. I don’t know for sure who my birth mother is – I was never told. What more do you need?”

Helblindi and Býleistr looked at each other again.

“I guess nothing,” Helblindi said. “We’re going to get out of this cave. You can come with or ditch, I don’t care.”

“Wait, I care,” said Býleistr. “Are you actually my sister, then?”

“I’ve only met Laufey once,” Loki said. “I would hardly consider him my father.”

Helblindi laughed coldly. “We wouldn’t, either,” he said. “How’d you meet Laufey? It must have been a while ago.”

“Um, I happened upon him,” Loki said. Awkwardly, and perhaps not too smartly, she added, “And then I killed him.”

“No, you did not,” Býleistr said, his voice going high. “No. Really?”

“No one knows anything about his death beyond that he died,” Helblindi said. “The guards found his body in the trenches.”

“Killed by an unknown energy force?” Loki guessed. “Yes. That was me. But that was, what, eight years ago? I can't get in trouble for it, can I?"

A long silence full of wide eyes and staring followed this. And then –

“Thank you!” from Helblindi, who before this had been mostly reserved.

Loki didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t all too surprised that killing Laufey wasn’t a dealbreaker for them, because frankly he hadn’t seemed like a great man or king, but really. Helblindi hadn’t even said it in a sinister voice. How was she meant to respond to genuine gratefulness? And how did he believe her so readily?

“Okay,” she said. “Then.”

“No, seriously, he was awful,” Býleistr said. “Thanks. How did you kill him?”

“Magic,” Loki said. “I’m good at magic.”

“We’re not,” Helblindi said. His expression was unreadable to Loki, which was never a surprise. “Would you help us?”

Loki frowned. “With magic?” she asked. “Or your quest? I have no intention of angering Thanos right now.”

 _Again_ , she added in her head, just to be angsty.

“You don’t have to anger him,” said Býleistr. “We’ve just heard of another stone that may help… I don’t know. Are the Guardians of the Galaxy alive?”

“No, I think they’re dead,” said Helblindi. “But just someone. We’re just trying to find the stone.”

“Oh,” Loki said. “You’re talking about the Ego Stone.”

“You know about it?”

“I know the legend.” Loki frowned. “But I’m not sure how. I must have heard it somewhere. You’re looking to find it? Do you have any idea where it is?”

“We’ve heard it’s on Jötunheim,” Helblindi said. “We were going to find a witch who could read energy signatures…”

Loki wanted to argue that she was not a witch, but it felt too reminiscent of the conversation she’d been having with Thor all her life. _I’m not a witch. (Then why do you dress like one?)_

“I may be able to do that,” she said. She made the choice in a split second: “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll help.”

And so, after a few more minutes of awkward discussion, Loki and her not-quite-siblings made their way out of the cave and into the world. Loki counted her lies as they talked and found that, as usual, it was easier to tell half-truths and avoid giving out real information than to actually _lie._

They probably thought she was terrible at being a Jötunn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhhhh
> 
> me trying desperately to make mcu loki have character: lets just pretend loki has read agent of asgard,
> 
> the thing is i'd like writing an aoa fic way more than an mcu loki fic but the 616 timeline is just so messed up and hard to get in on that i like. cant finish anything bc its just Too Much
> 
> anyway nobody commented on the last two chapters which is fine bc i don't care for them either but if u have any thoughts i'd love 2 hear them. thx! love u guys (the 2 ppl who bookmarked this)


	4. you and i are monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yes, my uncle died that way. Jötunheim’s economy has gotten even worse since that day. It’s been terrible.”
> 
> “It’s been two weeks,” said Loki.
> 
> “Economies crash quickly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for implied transphobia (transmisogyny specifically) in Loki's recollections. also men being assholes. derogatory words used (its a bar fight, basically). Also that weird thing where the frost giants think you have to be cool and tall to be respected, yk.
> 
> this chapter goes out to my first commenter sarah!!!

Four days into the mindless reading of energy patterns and magical outlines, Loki got tired of hanging out with teenagers.

As princes, Helblindi and Býleistr had some pull even in the divided kingdom of Jötunheim, and they found cheap prices in an inn that sold alcohol by the bucket. Loki didn’t care for the bucket but appreciated the alcohol.

Four days. Of pure teenage antics and frankly boring magical reading.

She’d not learned much about Laufey beyond that his sons were glad he was dead and grateful to Loki that she had killed him. Helblindi talked to Loki sparingly, but Býleistr often bothered Loki and often tried to get her to tell him more of her past.

“I was adopted,” Loki said. “Raised apart from the rest of Jötunheim. When I found out I was adopted, I confronted my father – my adoptive father, and he told me I was Laufey’s son.”

“Son?” Helblindi asked, looking up from a book. Loki froze. Damn it!

“Um…”

Her chest felt cold, colder than normal even in her Jötunn form. She’d so enjoyed living as a woman without being questioned; even among her brother’s friends, she’d been mocked (though they'd call it teasing), more out of misunderstanding than genuine intolerance. But misunderstanding was intolerance, after long enough. Asgard was not, for all it was, a place for people like her.

They’d never really understood her, even Sif, who Loki would have expected to at least somewhat understand leaving behind the roles of gender. It was the Asgardian education system at its finest, she supposed.

“Hel,” Býleistr said reproachfully. He was her favorite so far, if only because he was still a child.

“Sorry,” Helblindi said. “I didn’t mean to…”

“I’m going to go out,” Loki said, and left despite their protests.

She missed Sigyn.

Loki found a bar with a name she could barely read and couldn’t pronounce. In it was a number of Jötnar, Frost and Storm, drinking heavily and in small groups, eying around warily as she opened the door.

The bartender only glanced at her.

“You underage?” he asked. Loki rolled her eyes.

“No,” she said. Her voice seemed to surprise him – either the deepness or the accent, she couldn’t tell – and he went back to doing the stereotypical bartender task of washing dishes with a rag.

Loki ordered her drink (straight vodka that made her throat burn like Hel) and downed it as soon as he placed it on the counter. She could feel other eyes on her, and as soon as she slid her glass back, a hand gripped her shoulder.

Disgust creeped up inside her. Being touched had made her uncomfortable even before, and now the closer someone got to her neck, the more she hated it. She stiffened in her seat, jaw clenched shut.

The hand’s owner shoved Loki around so she was facing him instead of the bar. She nearly toppled off her seat. “Skaldk’r,” the man called to someone behind him. “There’s a runt here.” He sounded delighted, amused to see someone of her stature. Like seeing a particularly funny-looking animal at a zoo.

The man who must’ve been called Skaldk’r rose up from his seat, some feet away from Loki. He was bigger than almost any Jötunn Loki had seen before, with horned protrusions coming from his forehead and black markings from his hairline to under his eyes.

“You’re going to get trampled on,” Skaldk’r laughed. It seemed like a weird thing to laugh about, but Loki stayed silent. “How do you manage in the wild?”

 _The wild_ , thought Loki. _Is that where I am? And how do you claim not to be a beast, like the princes do?_

It was an ugly thought, especially the last part of it, which she left unsaid even in her mind: _And how can I?_

“How do you?” Loki asked. Of course it was unwise to engage the man, but really she’d never been one for self preservation.

The first man – the one who had shoved her – laughed loudly. “Skald, she’s got a temper,” he said to his friend.

“I do hear that the shorter you are, the colder you get,” Skaldk’r said. Loki wasn't sure how that made sense, but possibly it was a metaphorical, like that old Earth saying about short people and Hel. “Is it true? Maybe runts are the future. The first Giants to not burn in the sun.”

“They can’t be called Giants,” the first man argued. “Too small. But some people are into that,” he added to Loki, like he was reassuring her.

Loki made a face, grit her teeth and forced her mouth shut. Then she found she didn’t even need to respond, because another Jötunn was walking toward the men with a displeased expression that Loki might have found unnerving a week before. Now it just seemed like a _face_ , and not the one of a monster. It didn’t hurt that the Jötunn – a woman – was... attractive. To Loki's standards, which were unreasonably high in many regards.

“Hey,” the woman said. Up close, Loki realized she too was actually much smaller than the two men, although she must have been a foot or so taller than Loki herself. “What do you–” (here she called the men a word Loki didn’t recognize, and was not translated by the Allspeak) “think you’re doing here?”

“Ah, Angrboða,” the first man said, raising his hands up. “Not doing any harm. Just never met a runt smaller than you.”

“Sure,” Skaldk’r agreed. “We were just trying to get her side of the story.”

 _What a terrible story_ , Loki mused.

“Her side of _what_ story?” Angrboða asked, lip curled. “The circumstances of her birth? The alienation she faces? Are you a journalist, Skaldk’r? Trying to get a scoop on the inferior Jötunn? Is that it?”

She took a step closer to him.

Skaldk’r sighed. “You’re a cunt,” he told her matter-of-factly. “How’s it your business, argr bitch?”

"Oh, shut up."

Fed up, Angrboða grabbed Skaldk’r by the wrist and threw him to the other side of the room with a force rivalling Thor’s when he played his _stupid_ ‘Get Help’ game. This was incredibly impressive to Loki; the man must have had five feet on her.

“Get out,” Angrboða said.

Loki watched with a hand over her mouth. She loved bar fights, which was about half the reason she'd gone along with Thor and his warrior's outerworld trips. Skaldk’r didn’t move, just glared up at Angrboða from the ground, and she kicked him and repeated her words.

The first man slowly edged away from Loki and toward the door, grabbing Skaldk’r as he did so.

“Sorry,” he said as he walked out the door. “Ma’am.”

Angrboða laughed. “Idiot,” she said contemptuously. She looked at Loki charmingly. “What’s a lady like you doing here?” she asked, leaning down with her elbow on the table to look Loki in the eye.

Loki, unnaturally pleased by being called a _lady_ , couldn’t fight away a small smile. “Drinking,” she said, and adjusted herself in the too-large seat. “Would you join me?” she added daringly.

Angrboða laughed and placed herself in the seat next to Loki’s. “I’ve not seen you before,” she said. “I thought I knew all the runts in Lynnedslagspor.”

Was that the name of the town they were in? That was terrible.

“I’m just passing through,” Loki said. “I’m helping some children on some sort of quest.” she paused for comedic effect. “Really, I’m just kind of lost.”

Angrboða didn’t laugh, but she didn’t sour. She asked, “What quest? Real children?”

“Well, teenagers,” Loki amended. “They’re looking for a magical stone.”

“I’ve heard of several magical stones,” Angrboða said. “What kind are you looking for? Enchanted or natural?”

“If it’s enchanted, the one who enchanted it must be long dead,” Loki said, “or I’m sure they would have argued with how the stone’s brothers have been used recently.”

“The stone has siblings?”

“Six,” Loki said, and awkwardly put up six fingers, which didn’t look as cool as she thought it would have. She frowned at her hands and put them in her lap. “You heard of the – when people started disintegrating?”

“Yes,” Angrboða said. “Yes, my uncle died that way. Jötunheim’s economy has gotten even worse since that day. It’s been terrible.”

“It’s been two weeks,” said Loki.

“Economies crash quickly.”

“Right.” Loki looked over at the bartender, who was not-so-secretly spying on their conversation. She grabbed her shot glass and tapped it on the table. “More,” she said rudely.

“Bitch,” the bartender said, and poured her another shot. He made a different drink, something blue and bubbly, and gave that one to Angrboða.

“Thank you, Beli,” said Angrboða. “And don’t call women bitches. Didn't you learn that two minutes ago?”

Beli the bartender shrugged and moved to end of the bar, far away from Angrboða.

“You seem to intimidate the people here,” Loki said. “It’s impressive.”

“I have lived here a long time,” Angrboða said. “They’ve learned to fear me, and those who don’t will in time. I take no shit. And you?”

Loki shifted in her seat, unsure of what she was asking. “It depends,” she said neutrally. “Angrboða, have you any talent in magic?”

“Of course,” Angrboða said. “They call me the witch of the Ironwood. Of course, I’m a sorceress and not a witch, but it’s really the thought that counts.”

“Oh, I agree,” Loki said. “My– a friend of mine has been calling me a witch for centuries despite my protests. Though I think now it’s mostly a jest.”

She could not call Thor her brother here. Once, she would have welcomed the excuse, but now it just felt deceitful. But what was she if not the goddess of lies? Nothing. 

_You'll always be the god of mischief,_ Thor's voice said in her head. _But you could be more._

“If you’re looking for a stone, you might find out what energy it gives off,” Angrboða said. “Do you know its properties?”

“No,” Loki said. “But it must be powerful. The other ones are – I’ve wielded two myself.”

She felt a touch of pride, misplaced as it was. What she did for Thanos – for the Mad Titan was nothing to pride herself on. And still she was – the Titan had needed a fire-forged gauntlet to handle the power of all six, and Loki had wielded two even after an untold time of torture.

And she was a fire-forge herself, these days.

“Bragging,” Angrboða said.

Loki shrugged. “Merely touching it can kill others,” she said. “I feel like I’ve earned the right to brag.”

“Well, I love an assured woman,” said Angrboða. “If you’d like, I could lend you some of my talismans… to help find that magic.”

“I’ve been trying on my own for days,” Loki admitted. “No luck. Perhaps I just have no talent for searching.”

“And the children you’re helping?”

“They have no magic,” Loki said. “Or none they’re aware of. Teenage boys, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Angrboða said. “We live in the good timeline. In the bad one, I was one.”

Loki’s raised her eyebrows. “Samesies,” she said. “Would you help me? I’m sure we could compensate you.”

Angrboða smiled with a closed mouth, flitted her eyes to look at all of Loki. Loki had to still herself; she found herself almost bashful under this Jötunn’s gaze. It felt strange and fun and hideous to flirt with a monster.

And Loki was a monster, too. Of course she was – they all were.

“Why not?” Angrboða decided. “I’m sure you have a good way of compensation.”

“Aye, Ymir,” called Beli the bartender. “Get a _fucking_ room, Angrboða.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> loki and angrboda invented horny energy. the moral of this chapter is: don't call women bitches!
> 
> \- beli is a frost giant killed by thor in the myths.  
> \- angrboda is a trans woman, also a jotunn 'runt' like loki (she's still taller than loki tho)  
> \- loki's still kind of a frost giant bigot but she's gonna deal with it  
> \- oh also the situation with sigyn & loki and angrboda & loki is like: sigyn/loki were dating but not ~dating~ but also sigyn had a thing with amora as well and basically they have a theoretically open relationship because its loki. that dude..........gets around anyway.


	5. house on the moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Magic. Now listen.” Angrboða revealed a long thread of energy, crackling as it waved in the air. “This is magic, right?”
> 
> “Sure,” said Býleistr, who did not know what magic looked like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for lokilesbian 4 shouting me out i got TWO WHOLE comments afterward!!

“Wait,” said Helblindi. “So you just… added a whole other person to our quest? Without even asking or anything?”

Angrboða giggled. She was quite drunk.

“Would you have refused?” Loki asked.

“No,” said Býleistr. Helblindi swivelled his head to glare at him.

“Maybe!” he said, which clearly meant no, he was just mad for the principle. “And no offense, but you guys look really drunk.”

“And I’m already better at magic than you,” said Angrboða. “Doesn’t that mean when I’m sober, I’ll be even better?”

“That does check out,” said Býleistr, grinning at his brother. Loki was beginning to believe that half of his niceness was done just to annoy Helblindi… which was an idea he could get behind, even if the execution made him look weak.

“Thank you, Býleistr,” Helblindi said flatly. “You’re being _really_ supportive and helpful right now.”

Býleistr smiled. “I try,” he said sweetly.

“Ymir,” Angrboða said. “These _are_ children.”

“I’m four hundred and twenty,” Helblindi said.

“Exactly,” Angrboða said, nodding sagely. “A child. Not even of age to drink.”

“This conversation is going delightfully,” Loki cut in. “Helblindi, Angrboða has offered to help find the Ego Gem with us. I don’t know if they taught you manners in… king-to-be school, but most would say thank you. Or something.”

“Yeah, Hel,” said Býleistr, who was clearly enjoying this. “Angrboða, I’m happy to see you. Loki hasn’t been very helpful.”

“The magic here is weird,” Loki said defensively. “I can’t read it right.”

It was true. Trying to understand Jötunheim’s seiðr was like reading one of Thor’s friends’ handwriting – almost impossible without a dozen references and input from someone familiar with it. Loki had never studied Jötunheim’s specific forms of magic. As a child, she’d asked Frigga what magic they did there, and she changed the subject for reasons she only understood centuries later.

“Well, you use Vanir magic, mostly,” Angrboða said, leaning against the wall of the inn room. “Have you not worked with Jötunn magic in a while? You might have, like, forgotten how.”

Loki froze; she was too drunk for this.

“Vanir magic?” Býleistr asked. “Where’d you learn that?”

Loki took a split second (which was more like five seconds, because, again, she was drunk) to decide her course of action. “Vanaheim,” she said awkwardly. “I… studied abroad there.”

“That’s _cool_ ,” said Býleistr.

“That’s weird,” said Helblindi. “They let you in there? Vanaheim almost never lets Jötnar into their borders, I mean, after they aligned with Asgard and all that.”

“I managed,” Loki said shortly. She actually had studied in Vanaheim for a few years in her early adulthood; she’d stayed with Frigga’s sister, who’d never liked Loki very well.

“I think the Vanir actually like Jötunn runts more than the full-sized ones,” Angrboða said. “I have a cousin that studied there. She was, uh, half Storm, so they liked her better than the Frosts anyway.”

“We’re a fourth Storm,” said Helblindi. “Our mother was half.”

“Wait, you guys are siblings?” Angrboða looked wildly between the three of them. “Shit, I’m drunk.”

“We’re estranged,” said Loki. “Helblindi, Býleistr, I’m going to bed, I’m really drunk. You can be annoying in the morning.”

“Uh, okay,” Helblindi said. “Wait, is she gonna stay here?”

“I live a bit away,” Angrboða said. “But I don’t feel like walking. I’ll sleep on the floor and get at the magic shit tomorrow. God, I’m gonna have a hangover.”

“What the fuck,” Helblindi said. “Why did I let her on this quest?” he said to Býleistr. Loki couldn’t tell which ‘her’ he was referring to.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Býleistr said. “This is hilarious.”

***

Helblindi awoke to someone crying.

He didn’t recognize the sound, because Býleistr was the only other person who had cried in front of him, and he cried very loudly and in an extremely ugly, disjointed way. The person crying now was more hyperventilating than actually crying.

He shoved the bedcovers off and rolled out of the bed, hitting the floor with a thud. He stood up again and glanced around the room he, Bý and Loki shared. Now that he was truly awake and out of bed, he was somewhat confused as to what he was trying to do. Usually when Býleistr cried, Helblindi just ignored him.

Loki was the one crying, but she didn’t seem to be awake, or at least not coherent. She was in her bed, on top of the blankets, clenching her throat with one hand. She looked like she was choking herself and crying about it.

Damn. Now he had to stop her.

Helblindi shoved a hand against Loki’s shoulder. Nothing happened, so he tried it again, and this time she rolled onto her chest. Gasping for breath, she pushed herself up on one hand and turned to look at him.

“What the Hel?” she whispered furiously.

“You were choking yourself,” Helblindi whispered back. “Sorry I didn’t want you to die in this hotel room.”

“I wouldn’t qualify this as a hotel,” Loki muttered. She swallowed a few times and touched her neck lightly. “Shit. I guess I… had a dream.”

Not for the first time, Helblindi wondered who she’d been before she’d woken up in that coffin. She’d barely offered anything beyond that she’d been adopted after Laufey abandoned her, and any attempt by Býleistr to get more information was mostly unsuccessful.

Helblindi had been biding his time, gathering whatever scraps Loki gave out until he had something to latch onto. Maybe the Vanir magic was something he could use. It was that or the dozen instances of Loki clearly not understanding Jötunheim or its customs. If Helblindi didn’t know better…

“What did you dream about?” he asked, not kindly, but not _un_ kindly.

Loki took her hand away from her throat. “Choking,” she said, “and fire.”

There was _something_ wrong with her, that Helblindi knew. He wondered if she’d lived a better or worse life than them for not knowing Laufey, for being a runt. She wasn’t like him, and he didn’t like it when he didn’t understand people.

“Okay,” Helblindi said, and took a step away from her. “Okay,” he repeated, unsure of how he was going to do this. “So what are you hiding from us?”

It took a solid fifteen seconds for Loki to register his words and sit up, unnaturally and uncomfortably straight. Then she said, “Can you ask more specifically?”

She wasn’t denying or confirming, which was… okay, but Helblindi didn’t actually _have_ any specifics. His brain was scrambling just trying to remember what his suspicions even were.

“You… said you were adopted,” he said, because it was the first thing that came to mind. “Raised away from other Jötnar. Why?”

“Why was I adopted?”

“Why were you raised apart? Is it because you’re a runt?”

Her eyebrows shot up but she didn’t comment on his disrespect. “Maybe,” she said. “It’s not as if I can ask. My adoptive father died.”

“No mother?” Helblindi asked. He leaned away from her and watched Loki’s face go blank.

“Not anymore,” she said, clearly not about to say more on the subject. Helblindi let it drop.

“I just need to know what you’re hiding from us,” he said, and felt incredibly awkward about it. Who had given him the right to act like this? Why was he trying to protect Býleistr from a stranger when he’d never done a thing against Laufey? “You’re Laufey’s daughter. I get that, I mean, I believe that. Whatever. Maybe you killed him, I don’t know. I just–”

He thrashed his hand about in a sort of frustrated effort. Loki visibly recoiled from him, although the look on her face wasn’t frightful. He didn’t know what it was. She didn’t behave like the other Jötnar Helblindi knew, even the women.

“Sorry,” he said, just in case. “I just feel like Bý– I don’t know you. I don’t know you and he doesn’t know you so I don’t trust you.”

“Oh,” Loki said. She crossed her legs and leaned against the back of the bed, apparently relaxed now. “Oh, you just don’t trust me because you don’t know who I am or where I come from and what I’m lying or telling the truth about. Because I might be dangerous.”

Helblindi blinked.

“Yes?” he ventured.

“Well, I can’t help you with that,” she said. Helblindi gave her an incredulous look. “Listen, I have a past. I’m a thousand years old. And I don’t want some children I don’t know to know all of it. I’ve died. I died before I was in that coffin. And I’ve… gotten in with bad people, in the past, and I’m trying to make up for it. Trying to figure out who I am.”

Her face was illuminated by something below and beside her, but when Helblindi looked, he could only catch the end of a green fire lighting up from her wrist. Loki didn’t react to the fire.

“I… think I get that,” he said. He felt bad, too, so he added, “Sorry for interrogating you in the middle of the night. I just thought this was a good time for some reason.”

“Oh, you child,” Loki said. “You thought that was interrogation? I’ve had so much worse.”

***

When Býleistr woke up the morning after Loki hilariously brought a girl back from a bar to join the quest, everyone else was already awake. He assumed they were awake, because he was alone in their room.

“Everyone always ditches me,” he muttered. He figured it was because he was younger than them, which didn’t feel fair, because he would never be as old as them, unless he travelled through time or aged too fast. Neither of those options seemed realistic, although the universe was crazy and he could never be sure.

Bý looked around. Loki’s bed was neat despite her probable hangover, while Býleistr and Helblindi’s was a mess of blankets and pillows scattered everywhere. Helblindi hadn’t wanted to sleep with Býleistr, but he hadn’t wanted the floor, and neither of them wanted to sleep in Loki’s bed.

On their way to the inn five days ago, Býleistr had touched Loki on the back in the way people did to him when they were acknowledging his existence. She’d stumbled away from him ungracefully and almost ended up in a ditch; Helblindi had been the one to catch her by the wrist and he’d ended up burned from it.

Býleistr didn’t know how to bridge the gap between him and his… sister? It wasn’t clear, although it should have been. She was Laufey’s daughter; they were his sons. They shared the same crown marking from their mother’s forehead. It was simple.

Except it wasn’t. Given a chance, Býleistr would have forsaken his own royal family for an adoptive one, just to get away from the monster-king Laufey. Loki apparently wasn’t given a choice, but if she knew –– and maybe she did –– than she likely would have, too. Was it fair to drag her back into their family out of…

Not pity or kindness. Just selfishness, he was sure, and when he came to that thought he felt sick, but he had no chance to feel sorry for himself because the door to their room flung open.

“We forgot you,” Helblindi said as he came in.

“They didn’t,” the Jötunn woman Angrboða assured him.

“Don’t tell him that,” said Helblindi, the bastard.

“Ass,” Býleistr said. He craned his head to look behind them, but it was just the two of them. “Where’s Loki?”

“Not sure,” Helblindi said.

“She’s in the bathroom,” Angrboða said. “On her period. I had to give her new underwear.”

“That’s where you went off to during breakfast?” Helblindi asked, and frowned. “Okay, I was being really mean to you in my head when I was alone at the table for no reason, then.”

“What did you think we were doing?” Angrboða asked.

“Umm,” Bý said. “Yeah, Hel, you ass. Wait, how did you give her extra underwear? Are you guys even the same size?”

“Magic,” said Angrboða, possibly jokingly but Bý couldn’t tell. “Speaking of magic… we found something.”

“You mean you found something,” said Helblindi, for some reason not taking any credit.

“I wasn’t including you. I was speaking about me and Loki.”

“What did Loki do?”

“Magic. Now listen.” Angrboða revealed a long thread of energy, crackling as it waved in the air. “This is magic, right?”

“Sure,” said Býleistr, who did not know what magic looked like.

“Right. So that’s just a basic physical form of magic, and so what we do search for other magic is expose this thread to that magic, or just any magic in general, and see how and when it reacts. We’re looking for a portion of an incredibly powerful version of magic, so we sort of know what do look for.”

Loki walked in. “Oh, are we doing a demonstration?” she asked.

“Yes,” Angrboða said. “But I’m bored of it. You finish.”

She pushed the thread into Loki’s hands. Loki sighed overdramatically and twirled it in the air. “Okay,” she said. “We found that if we draw in influences from the east, the thread shows us that there’s some sort of reality-bending magic from over there somewhere. Not as reality-warping as the Reality Stone or anything but… enough that it might have been part of it, once.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Býleistr said, and, thinking that was maybe too mean and that he didn't want Loki to stop liking him, added, “but I like it!”

“Thanks,” Angrboða said. “Honestly, we’re just guessing.”

“Yeah, we’re going east until the string explodes or points us somewhere else.”

“Like a compass?”

“...Yes.”

***

They found another mountain.

“No,” said Helblindi. “I am not climbing another mountain.”

“Shut up,” said Angrboða. “This is barely a mountain. Maybe a hill.”

In the past two days they’d been travelling together, Loki had found time and time again that Angrboða acted far bigger than she was. It seemed to work for her, but even she was a foot taller than Loki and she was sure that if she tried it herself, she’d end up looking more foolish than ever.

(“Such is the way of a runt,” Angrboða laughed when Loki mentioned this to her. It was still strange to hear herself be called a runt and for it to be true; on Asgard, Loki was tall, if lanky, and his height was one thing he was not inferior for. Here, she was… less.)

“It’s not that bad,” Loki said, although she too was tired of walking and wished that someone would pick her up and _carry_ her up the mountain. “Anyway, there’s an overhang over there–” she waved vaguely, “so we can rest under that if we don’t make it up the whole way before nightfall.”

“Do we have to make it to the top?” Býleistr asked.

“Not sure,” Loki said. “The string’s… well, it’s fried, so we’re just going to have to keep our eyes open.”

“Our eyes, ears, and souls,” said Angrboða. That must’ve been a Jötunn phrase; Loki wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard it before. “But, no, there’s definitely something up there. I can feel it.”

Loki watched Helblindi and Býleistr exchange confused, non-magic user looks with each other. She was almost glad neither of them understood the craft – the chasm between hammers and swords and illusions and magic was one of the first things to really drive Loki and Thor apart, even before the lies and the throne and Thanos and everything else.

But she couldn’t think about Thor here. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever see him again, not because she was going to die (again) or he was going to die, but because she didn’t understand how she was supposed to face him with blue skin and leering red eyes. She remembered what he’d said about the Jötnar his whole life, even if he’d taken back his remarks.

Unlearning things like that wasn’t a task made for a weekend on Earth. Loki didn’t think she could do it in a century – but then, Thor’d always been better at being good than her.

Loki was quiet as they walked, hiked, and climbed further up. She became more uncomfortable the further up she went; the air was thicker, somehow, away from Jötunheim’s still icy core, and the sun felt hotter than any fire she’d been a part of.

She thought of the Casket, burned away in Ragnarok. She could’ve taken it with her like she had the Tesseract – the Space Stone – but at the time, even looking at it, she’d remembered her Jötunn form, her blue skin and Odin on the stairs, telling her, _I thought we could unite our kingdoms, one day…_

She didn’t take it. Was she regretting it after living in Jötunheim for only a week? Maybe. Well, yes. Yes, she was.

But that no longer mattered.

“I hate this,” said Býleistr. It was hard to think of him as a child when he was almost two feet taller than her, but he certainly was one.

“Can I be honest?” Angrboða asked. They all shrugged and muttered in assent. “I’m basically fine. I’m only a fourth Frost.”

“Ugh,” Helblindi said. “I’m only a fourth Storm.”

Loki, wishing to end the conversation, said, “Remember last week when I was literally on fire?”

They didn’t speak after that.

Loki wished she’d been given a chance to really research Jötunheim before trying to blend in with its people. She knew of the Storm Giants, most of whom had died in what Loki had not previously known to be an Asgardian attack, but certainly was. Apparently her biological mother was half Storm, half Frost, which meant Loki was one fourth a Storm Giant like Helblindi and Býleistr. She didn’t like that.

She wished she could ask without tipping them off. She’d already raised the suspicion of Helblindi, though she attributed most of that to a traumatic upbringing. Angr seemed to like her, and Býleistr… she really didn’t understand him. He seemed nice, which didn’t make sense. He often acted more like a pet than a person.

“Wait,” Býleistr said. “Gross. There’s a bird over there.”

Helblindi stopped and looked around. Loki spotted a bird, coated with blood, flailing helplessly under a fallen rock.

“Ew,” Angrboða said.

“Oh,” Loki said. “It’s a magpie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woooooo


	6. i am a different story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hello, bird,” said another woman. “Do you know of any magic near here?”
> 
> “Why, yes,” the bird said, pushing death away for another minute with sheer force of will. “Are you looking for some?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> owo

The magpie hadn’t lived a long life. It had no magpie friends, for the only birds in this part of Jötunheim were the snow-ravens of the Vimur Forest, who did not care for the magpie’s strange feathers or voice or beak. Its food was sparse, too, but the water it drank – that was all a magpie needed, really, for a good life.

But even with all of that knowledge and wisdom, even knowing far more words than any ordinary magpie, the nameless magpie had not foreseen the rock, coming out from the mountain and cleaving it through the stomach. Before, the magpie would have thought it an anticlimactic death… this was not the case.

The magpie laid dying, thinking, _Is that it?_ until it heard its name.

“Oh,” said someone, far away in bird-space. “It’s a magpie.”

The magpie lifted its head, or tried to, and croaked weakly to the woman – was it a woman? Magpies had no need for gender. “Help me,” it tried, knowing there was nothing to be done. Even if there was, what sort of man would expend her magic on a creature like it?

“Gross,” said another, taller but younger not-bird.

“Don’t be rude,” said the woman who knew its name. “It’s dying. Would you like me to make fun of you as you died in front of me?”

The other not-birds didn’t respond and seemed to not know how to react. The magpie wondered if this woman was really a woman, and not a magpie in Jötunn form, but the question died in its beak-mouth.

The woman crouched down beside it. “Hello,” she muttered, shifty-eyed and possibly embarrassed to be speaking to an animal. But was she not an animal herself?

“Hello,” the magpie croaked. The woman shoved away, shock lighting her eyes, and the other Jötnar mumbled among themselves in tired surprise.

“Um,” she said. “Can you… you can speak?”

“Yes,” the magpie said. “I am dying.”

The young Jötunn whispered to his elder, “Do magpies usually talk when they’re dying?”

His elder, white-haired and cold-eyed, held a stone gaze to the magpie, who was beginning to feel embarrassed. He didn’t respond.

“Hello, bird,” said another woman. “Do you know of any magic near here?”

“Why, yes,” the bird said, pushing death away for another minute with sheer force of will. “Are you looking for some?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “We’re looking for a Stone.”

“Awful rude to talk about stones around me,” said the magpie, who was still trapped under rocks.

“Um,” the woman said.

The magpie cackled.

“Angr…” the magpie-woman almost laughed. “It’s teasing you. It’s a trickster bird, you know?”

“You know a lot about magpies,” the magpie noticed. “Are _you_ looking for magic, too?”

The magpie could swear it had heard her voice, seen her face before… but as the blood washed out of it, the knowledge did, too.

“We’re all looking for the same magic,” the magpie-woman said. “A Stone, like Angrboða said. It may be very powerful.”

“I’ve not heard of stones beyond the mountain rocks,” the magpie croaked, “but I’ve heard of power. I heard about a book of legend, destined to… do something.” It tried in vain to flap its wings. “I can’t remember, anymore. It might have been a book of keys.”

The white-haired, hard-hearted Jötunn knelt with his thighs to the ground so that he could look at the magpie better. He was much taller than the magpie, though, and his effort too was in vain.

“A book of keys,” the magpie-woman repeated. “Do you know where this book might be, magpie?”

“Certainly,” it said. “I could show you, but I am dying.”

“Ymir,” the white-haired Jötunn said, too aggravated.

“You are angry,” the magpie whispered. “Well. I cannot show you, but I have many words left in me. Just being here, you are keeping me alive.”

It hadn’t known that until it spoke the words, but it was true. Perhaps this was its magpie-destiny: to die, trapped in rocks in a mountain far from home, surrounded by magical strangers. It seemed unfair, but nothing in a bird’s life was ever fair.

“Tell us, then,” said the woman, Angrboða. She was the only one in the group with her own name, so she must have been the most important – still, the magpie’s attention drew to the magpie-woman.

“I see myself in you,” it croaked. “What are you called?”

The magpie-woman quirked her deep blue lips in an unfamiliar way. She was not smiling nor frowning, and those were the only two mouth-actions the magpie knew of.

She said, “I am called Loki.”

The magpie laughed, “Loki!” and tried again to flutter its wings. It failed and quieted with a bird-sigh. “The book… it has a golden trail, and an icy cave. Go past the waterfall – not behind it – and you’ll see the trail. Follow it.”

With its last instructions, the magpie’s suspended animation ceased, and the rest of its blood filtered out of its body, leaving it to die without another word. In its last moments, the magpie wished it could have seen these strange Jötnar finish their quest, but it was not meant to be.

Fading away, it heard the boy-Jötunn say, “Do birds go to Hel when they die?”

***

The waterfall had once been frozen, but in the post-Casket heat, the water in it rushed out into a stream with a force too great to wade through. They stopped and stood a few feet away, too dazed from the hiking and the warm air to really think.

“I think we need a bridge,” Býleistr said.

“Just freeze it again,” said Helblindi.

Loki stepped back to let the brothers fight amongst themselves. She whispered to Angrboða, “Should we make a bridge or something?”

Angrboða said, “Or part the water. Like in that story on Midgard.”

Loki frowned. She hadn’t heard that story. “Yeah…” she mumbled. “I’m not great at elemental magic.”

That’d always been Thor’s schtick, even if his lightning was inherent ability rather than a practiced craft. Loki’d been jealous, but she considered her natural shapeshifting more of a gift than what had in their childhood been mostly static electricity and minor sparks.

“I can do ice and storm alright,” Angrboða said. “Blizzard magic. Helblindi might be right; we could probably freeze it.”

Helblindi swiveled around on his foot to look at Angr. “Did you say I’m right?” he asked, and then looked back at Býleistr. “Told you.”

“Ugh,” Býleistr said. “All I’m saying is you aren’t even that _good_ at forming ice not on your own self. It’s a whole waterfall.”

“What if we just freeze part of it?” Helblindi asked. “And I didn’t say _I_ would do it. I mean. Loki can, probably. Right?” he added to Loki.

“Um, no,” Loki said. “I mean… I’m not great at elemental magic. Which I just said to Angrboða.”

“I wasn’t listening,” Helblindi said.

“I’ll do it,” Angrboða said. “Dumb boys,” she added, grinning at Loki.

Angrboða’s teeth, as well as Helblindi’s (but not Býleistr), were carnivorous, sharp things, unlike what Loki was used to. It made her uncomfortable, especially with the knowledge that her own were similarly animalistic.

But was she an animal?

She put the thoughts away in a box inside her mind and hoped to never see them again.

Angrboða knelt, one knee in the stream, and spread her palms into the water, each finger a width apart. The water crackled into ice and spread to the other side of the gorge. After a minute, Angrboða stood up and away from it.

“It should be think enough,” she told them, and stepped onto the ice. “Yeah, it works.”

“Well, you are smaller than us,” Helblindi said, probably just to be contrary. Angrboða didn’t respond – she just went the rest of the way across the stream.

Býleistr followed her and soon they’d all crossed the stream, too simply for how much they’d discussed it. They followed the magpie’s directions and soon found the golden path he spoke of, a thin trail of light leading up and around the mountainside.

“This has been really weird,” Helblindi said as they walked. “Not just today with the bird. Everything’s been really weird for a while now.”

“Since the dust stuff,” Býleistr supplemented. “Yeah. But I’m kind of having fun.”

“You’re a kid on a quest,” Helblindi said. “Of course you are. But you didn’t see the people die.”

“I watched my uncle die in front of me,” Angrboða said. “He owns the bar we met at,” she added to Loki.

“I didn’t see anyone turn to dust,” Loki said. “I was already dead when it happened.”

Nobody responded, though Býleistr frowned like he was trying to figure out if she was joking or lying or not. She wasn’t, of course – she’d grown tired of lies, even if she could never be free of them.

“I heard it happened on Midgard first,” Angrboða said, “and spread out to the next realms.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Býleistr said.

“I thought you heard it was the Mad Titan,” said Loki.

“I didn’t,” Býleistr said. “Helblindi did.”

Helblindi shrugged.

“Fascinating conversation we’re having here,” Loki said, “but I think this is it.”

She could see the opening to a cave, a blue glow casting from where the golden trail faded into. Already Loki could feel the roar of magic – powerful magic – so loud in her head that she could barely hear the hum of the sky around her.

“You go first,” Helblindi said to Býleistr.

“...No,” Býleistr said. Loki rolled her eyes at them.

“I’ll go first,” she said. “And we should really stop fighting about every step we take.”

When she looked back to the cave opening, Angrboða was already leaning against the stone wall.

“Sorry,” she called. “I thought you were having a sibling discussion or something.”

Helblindi threw his shoulders up and looked skyward, and Býleistr snickered behind his hand. Loki made her way next to Angrboða.

She didn’t need to duck into the cave, but behind her she heard Býleistr smack his head into the stone and cursed.

“Who taught you to swear,” Helblindi said, not in a questioning tone.

“Shut up,” Loki said, and, unsure of what she was doing, kicked aside a rock that was too large for kicking. The rock slid a few inches, revealing a hole of more golden light beneath it. “Oh, nice.”

“Ymir,” Angrboða said. “This has been a weird week.”

“I know, right?” Loki pushed the rock fully off of the hole.

“Is the key book in there?” Býleistr asked.

“Hm,” Loki said, and reached into the hole. She grasped around for something that she couldn’t see – not for darkness, but for the almost blinding light coming from the pit, from the… “Oh, found it.”

She pulled the book out – in her hands, the light began to fade, and the shape and make of the book revealed itself. It was large, bigger than both of her hands, and on the cover there showed a garden scene of black, gold, red and green.

“Is there a key in it?” Býleistr asked.

Loki flipped open the book to the first page. “Give me a minute to go through it,” she said. She gave herself a second for each page, to glance over the pictures and words for a clue, and ended up at the end of the book far later than she would have liked.

When she switched her gaze to the others, they were all in some state of disengagement. Býleistr was dozing on Helblindi’s shoulder, and Helblindi seemed to be attempting to crack every bone in his body, while Angrboða laid on her back and stared at the ceiling.

“Wait, did I space out?” Loki asked. “How long was I reading?”

“Six minutes,” Býleistr said. Now it was Loki’s turn to exasperatingly look to the ceiling. “We got bored.”

“There’s no key in the book,” said Loki, “but it might be a puzzle. I think I saw a page _about_ the Ego Gem. Perhaps we’ll stay the night in the cave so we can read it through properly.”

“Ugh,” Helblindi said.

“I’m hungry,” Býleistr said.

“There’s a Mountain Giant settlement at the top of the mountain,” Angrboða said. “Go steal their food.”

“Or we could buy it,” Býleistr said.

“No, I think you should steal it,” said Loki, who, as a prince(ss), had absolutely no reason to enjoy thievery as much as she did. “You can go. Get me something to eat.”

“Like, beef jerky?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Once Býleistr and Helblindi had both struggled out of the cave, Angrboða said, “Hey, now we can have cave sex.”

Loki laughed in a choking sort of way. “Um,” she said, “yeah.”

Angrboða breathed out a smile. “I’m _kidding_ ,” she said. “I hope I don’t make you uncomfortable. You’ve been flirting with me, right? You don’t have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or something?”

“I don’t,” Loki said, and thought of Sigyn again. “I had… someone, sort of,” she amended. “But I don’t know where she is or if she’s alive, and we were never exclusive or anything. I mean, she was having sex with this other girl on Vanaheim…”

“You had a thing with a Vanir girl?” Angrboða asked, sounding impressed. “Wow, but I hear they’re kind of bitchy.”

“They’re not _all_ bitchy,” Loki said, almost offended by even the notion of insulting Sigyn. “No, she was the nicest person alive, I think. And I’m, well, pretty fucked up, so she had to be nice to like me.”

“We’re all fucked up,” Angrboða said.

“Yeah…” Loki flipped to the middle of the book and frowned at the page, fixing her eyes on the image of the legend Jormungandr. The Midgard Serpent – it’d been prophesied to show up in Ragnarok, but it hadn’t. Many of the prophecies about Ragnarok hadn’t come true. “You aren’t– are you a lesbian?”

Angrboða blinked. “What?”

“I mean… I’m just wondering.”

“No,” Angrboða said. “I think I’d like anyone who was good enough for me.”

“Alright,” Loki said. “I’m the same. Just, you know, I’m not always a woman. I have been for a few months now, but – not always.”

It was a confession she usually would have made the other way around. Fifteen years old and admitting to Thor that she liked to appear in a girlish sort of way sometimes, shapeshifting like a shared secret with Sigyn, ‘girl’s nights’ with Amora. She missed those nights, but not the secrecy of them. This was different.

“Oh,” Angrboða said. It wasn’t a _bad_ oh. “So you…”

Loki shrugged uncomfortably. “You know I shapeshift,” she said. “But most see me as a man. And I don’t like to explain myself to everyone I meet, you know?”

Angrboða stayed silent for a few nerve wracking moments. “I definitely understand,” she said softly.

Loki traced the outline of the serpent and found her vision blurring as she did so, which was… weird, but she hadn’t eaten in many hours. Then she blinked, and felt something click inside her head, the fire-switch that had been turned somewhere in the middle of on and off turning to something, somewhere. She didn’t know what she was feeling; she never did.

“Loki?” Angrboða said. But she couldn’t hear the words, really – she was too focused on the texture of the paper, which was changing, it seemed, becoming less wood and more like leather.

“Um,” Loki said, and as she withdrew her hand, the picture moved with her, some sort of energy from it pulling out from the page.

And before her was a snake, too young to be giant-size but still clearly the snake in the picture. Its eyes were bright red like a Jötunn’s – like _Loki’s_ – and its snakeskin was a dark and shifting color.

The snake squirmed in her grasp.

The picture in the book was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gets anticlimactic in the next chapter, but only because i don't really care about thanos or defeating him. we basically skip right to after that shit.  
> thanks everyone for reading, comment your thoughts if you have any <3


	7. under this flooded sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is 11 pages in google docs. over 3k words. i also wrote it basically in one night

_“You pulled the Midgard Serpent from a book?”_

“I didn’t mean to,” Loki said.

“How do you accidentally make a snake from a book real?” Helblindi sounded more frustrated with every word.

“Magic?” Býleistr suggested. “She does magic.”

“Thank you,” said Loki, too grandly. “I _do_ do magic.”

“Oh my God,” Angrboða said. “It’s a baby Jormungandr. Look. It’s cute.”

Baby Jormungandr squirmed around on the ground. Býleistr crouched down to look at it… him?

“Do snakes have genders?” Býleistr asked.

“Aye, Ymir,” Helblindi muttered, though he pushed the words together so it sounded more like _ayimmeer._ “Obviously they have genders, By.”

“I disagree,” said Loki. “I’ve been an animal and sometimes I have no gender at all.”

Sometimes Býleistr had no idea what she was joking about and what she was serious about. He wasn’t sure he’d _ever_ seen her actually joke, but any instances had probably just slipped his mind. Probably.

Angrboða sure seemed to laugh at what Loki said, even if Býleistr didn’t hear it; they were always muttering to each other. Bý supposed maybe it was a runt thing, and felt weird about thinking that – was he meant to call them runts? He probably wasn’t.

“Okay,” Helblindi said. “It’s going to become a giant… person-eating snake in a few years, but okay.”

Helblindi was such a mood killer sometimes. And then other times, he was abandoning Býleistr to find pit-parties in the ditches of the mountains, with no calls, no texts in case Laufey inquired.

“Did it eat people in the myths?” Angrboða asked.

“All I know is it’s big,” Býleistr said, “and this guy isn’t, really.”

“It’s a baby,” said Loki. The baby Jormungandr slithered around her neck. “And I’d say it’ll take more than a few years to reach full size. Probably hundreds.”

“That’s true,” Angrboða said. “I think it is a Jötunn. Just, you know, a snake. Are you going to… keep it?”

Loki attempted to angle her head so she could look at the snake; it didn’t seem to work. “I guess so,” she said. “I’ve… I like snakes, I suppose. I know people who like snakes.”

“It’s a snake,” said Helblindi.

“Exactly.”

“Wait,” Býleistr said. “So you pulled it out of the book? With magic and stuff? How did that work?”

Loki shrugged. “I got kind of dizzy?” she offered, sticking her legs out on the floor and crossing her feet. “And then the picture was sort of moving, and I realized _I_ was moving it, and I pulled the snake out of the book.”

“That,” Helblindi said, “is a terrible explanation.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” said Loki, who was not, “but that’s all I have.”

“Alright,” Býleistr said. “I don’t think the… you know, the mechanics of the magic stuff matter, if you can still do it. Could you do it again?”

“The picture’s gone,” Loki said.

“But I– are you joking?” Loki didn’t respond. “Okay, anyway, wasn’t there a picture of the stone in the book? Like, a page on it?”

“Oh, shit,” Angrboða said, adding nothing to the conversation but sounding kind of cool while doing it.

“You could pull it out of the book,” Helblindi said, snatching it up from where they’d discarded it to the ground. “What page is it?”

Loki took the book from him. “Let me find it.”

She skipped through the book a few times and handed it to Angrboða: “Okay, I can’t find it.”

Helblindi muttered an insult. Loki showed him her middle finger, which Býleistr didn’t get, so maybe it was a regional thing. Angrboða found the page and set the book down on its back.

“There,” she said.

“I could have found it,” Helblindi muttered.

“Okay,” Loki said. “Shut up. I’m going to try it again.”

She traced her fingers around the cut of the Stone in the picture. “I don’t know if it’ll work,” she said. “I mean, maybe Jormungandr was always meant to come from a book. There are already tales of this stone, and not of its future. Maybe I can only take things from story when they’re meant to come from there.”

None of them responded. Baby Jormungandr pressed against the flesh of Loki’s neck and it didn’t burn or hurt or ache. She leaned into the touch.

“I mean…” Her fingers twitched on the page. “Does that make sense?”

“It doesn’t,” Helblindi said. “Because you’re holding it, now.”

“Wait, _am_ I?”

 

THREE WEEKS LATER.

Helblindi woke up to a storm.

It wasn’t an ice storm or a blizzard like this part of Jötunheim usually had – it was an electrical storm, with clouds and thunder and static in the air. The last time he’d heard of an actual storm like this was almost nine years ago, when Asgard’s prince Thor and his journeymen took to Jötunheim to challenge Laufey.

Hel went to the door and stepped out of his room. Only a few feet down the hallway was Býleistr, barefooted and tiptoeing down the corridor. They were back home, their new home. Laufey’s castle had wasted away since his death, and in the years since, Fárbauti had created an underground palace to keep herself and her children in the cold.

“Hel,” Bý whispered. “Do you hear that?”

“Thunder,” Helblindi said. “Should we get aboveground and look at it?”

“At the storm?” Býleistr asked. “And yes. Obviously. I’ve never seen a thunderstorm before. I didn’t think they happened here.”

They walked up the steps and out into the world while still in their sleeping clothes. Outside, the sky was dark and snow was still blowing around, but more present than that was the storm.

Loki was standing underneath it. Not a drop of rain hit her.

“What’s she doing?” Bý whispered in Helblindi’s ear. Hel shoved him away.

“Don’t know,” he muttered back, still watching her.

A figure dropped from the sky.

He was an Aesir, not a Jötunn, with blonde hair and an eyepatch. He pulled himself up from the ground using a large weapon for momentum. An axe.

“What the fuck,” Býleistr whispered, hitting Helblindi repeatedly on the shoulder.

“ _Stop_ ,” Hel said. “I’m trying to listen.”

“Very dramatic,” he could hear Loki said. “You know– you know there are people here. Jötnar.”

Her voice wavered nervously on the word _Jötnar._

“You’re…” the man – Helblindi swore he could recognize him – trailed off, and then started again what was presumably the same sentence. “You’re a Jötunn.”

Helblindi couldn’t see Loki’s face. Her curly hair waved around her in the wind. She was wearing a long green coat he’d never seen before.

“I am,” she said tersely.

“You’re _alive_ ,” the man said, like it was a surprise.

“Obviously,” Loki said. “Why would you be here if I wasn’t? And before you accuse me of faking my death again, that wasn’t an illusion. My body… Actually, I don’t know what happened to it. What happened after I died?”

“The ship blew up,” said the Aesir. “I survived. Some of the refugees escaped with Valkyrie.”

Býleistr whispered, “Valkyrie?”

“They were an Asgardian army of women,” Helblindi said. “I think. I don’t think they’re around anymore.”

“And half of those died again by Thanos,” Loki said; her voice changed when she spoke the Titan’s name. “And you’re… alive. I assume you, I don’t know, killed him or something.”

“Well, Nebula did,” the man said. “She’s a Centurian – I think you’d like her. She likes to stab people and has what the Midgardians called ‘beef’ with her sister.”

“Great,” Loki said. “We have so much in common.”

“Rude,” Býleistr muttered. It was probably a joke, as Loki didn’t seem to consider either of them as her brothers – something Helblindi couldn’t really fault her for.

“Loki,” the Aesir said. “Why are you… what have you been doing? On Jötunheim?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Loki.”

“Thor.” Loki gave her normal sort of exasperated sigh. “I don’t– I woke up here, okay? I don’t know why. I don’t even know why I’m alive. You _know_ I’m a– you know what I am.”

That was Thor?

“What the fuck,” Helblindi said, only just remembering to lower his voice. The two of them – Hel and Býleistr – were hiding behind a large ice-rock formation, but if he could hear Loki from behind it, she would obviously be able to hear him.

“That’s Thor?” Býleistr asked. “The prince of Asgard?”

“He might be king now,” Hel said. “I’m not sure, I think the whole place got destroyed some time ago.”

“How does Loki know him?”

Helblindi didn’t have an answer. His mind was working overtime.

Thor was staring at Loki. He was too far away for Helblindi to see his expression, but he’d been silent for a long time.

“I know,” he hesitated, “but I’ve… how long have you been here?”

He wasn’t saying what he’d meant to say, that Helblindi could tell.

“Some weeks,” Loki said. “Maybe a month. Norns, will you stop– will you stop _looking_ at me like that?”

There was a fire in her voice that Helblindi wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before. Thor took a step back, maybe subconsciously. “I’m not,” he protested.

“You _are,_ ” Loki said. “It’s– I– I can change back,” she said, going from stuttering to defeated in seconds. “I don’t care, I can change.”

“You don’t have to,” Thor said.

“What are they talking about?” Bý whispered.

 _Shapeshifter_ , Hel remembered. _Trickster._

“Are you sure?” Loki asked, sounding more agitated by the second. “Because I– I remember what you said about the Jötnar. Even if you changed your mind while you were on Midgard, that doesn’t– it doesn’t change a thousand years of hating them. Hating–”

She broke off.

“I don’t hate you,” Thor said. “I couldn’t… I could never hate you, Loki. Even though you… stab me and betray me and die a lot.”

“I didn’t choose to die,” Loki said. “Not this time.”

“I know.”

Býleistr mouthed, _what the fuck?_

Thor said, “You’re still my sister,” and said the word _sister_ weirdly, like he was unsure of the fact.

Hel and Bý exchanged wide-eyed, crazed looks.

“Does it not disgust you?” Loki asked, voice calm like the eye of a storm. “Looking at me. How long did we spend, believing the stories Asgard told of Frost Giants? You can’t throw a lifetime of hatred away in a weekend. I can’t even– I can’t even do it now.”

Thor said, “What do you want me to say, Loki? Do you want me to hate you?”

“No!” Loki said, loudly, and then glanced around as if to check if anyone heard her. She didn’t notice Helblindi behind the rock, but he stopped breathing for a while just in case. “I just don’t– I don’t want you to pretend, if you don’t want to see me as a Frost Giant then just tell me because I don’t want you to– I don’t want to be looked at like I’m a monster and have you lie to me and say it’s okay.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster.”

“Well, maybe I do!” Loki snapped. “I don’t understand how you just… you can’t just stop thinking that way. That’s not how it works. I mean, is it just me? Or have you suddenly decided that they’re all worthy of your, of your mercy? Your changed ways?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean – do you not think I’m a monster because I was raised Aesir?” she asked. “Civilized by Odin? If I was anyone else, if I wasn’t your sister, would you spare me a second thought?”

Thor stared at Loki – his sister, Helblindi’s sister, maybe, he didn’t know anymore – for a long time without speaking. He opened his mouth, teeth gritted, but before he could speak, Helblindi’s _idiot_ little brother forced himself up on the rock and yelled –

“What the fuck!”

Thor and Loki turned to look at exactly the same time as Býleistr’s rather weak arms gave out and he fell behind the rock again.

“Ow,” Bý said.

“Dumbass,” Helblindi said. “Stupid.”

He nudged Býleistr with his foot.

“Ow,” Býleistr said again, though there was no way that would have hurt. “Stop bullying me.”

“Býleistr,” Loki called. “Are you spying on me?”

Býleistr stood up and went around the rock. “Yes,” he called back. “But Helblindi is, too.”

“Fuck you,” Helblindi said, loud enough for Loki to hear. He went around the rock from the other side and gave Loki a look that was supposed to convey all of his confusion and anger, but probably just made him look like an idiot. “What’s going on?”

Loki put a hand to her face and muttered a curse. “Okay,” she said. “Thor, these are– Helblindi and Býleistr. Princes of Jötunheim. Laufey’s sons.”

“Laufey,” Thor repeated, and his eyebrows raised comically high. “Your _brothers?_ ”

“Yes,” Loki said. “And I had not told them about– about the adoption thing. So thank you guys for spying on me, it made all this a lot easier,” she added to Hel and Bý.

She sounded like she was being sarcastic, but with Loki, Helblindi could never be sure.

“Adoption thing?” Býleistr asked, and sat down in the snow.

Thor was watching him with a frankly uncomfortable kind of fascination. Loki walked toward them, pulling Thor with her by his arm.

“Ow,” Thor said.

“Shut up,” Loki told him. “Okay. I _was_ being honest with you two, before– I just wasn’t telling the whole truth.” She sat down adjacent to Býleistr. “I told you I was adopted by a passing soldier and raised apart from Jötunheim, yes? The soldier wasn’t a Jötunn – he was an Asgardian. Odin Borson.”

Thor sat next to Loki and shivered violently. She gave him her coat, which didn’t seem to help.

“The king of Asgard,” Helblindi said. “Why in Hel would he adopt you? To– to get back at Laufey, or…”

He trailed off. He couldn’t think of anything.

“He told me he was going to use me to bring about an alliance with Jötunheim,” Loki said. “That never happened, of course.”

Thor frowned at Loki. “When did he say that?” he asked, sounding mildly disgusted.

“When I found out I was a Jötunn,” Loki said. “You were banished at the time.”

“How did you find out?” Thor asked. “You never said.”

“You never asked.” Loki rubbed her eyes tiredly. “When we went to Jötunheim for your weird… thing with Laufey, someone grabbed my arm. I’d expected it to freeze, but it didn’t.” She raised her own hand and stared at it. “It turned blue. With– with Jötunn markings.”

Helblindi fixed his eyes on her face and didn’t move.

“And then you were banished,” Loki said to Thor, awkwardly. “So I… I went to the Vault. Where the Casket was – and I took it. And when I grabbed it, my hands turned blue. And so did the rest of me.”

Helblindi imagined a younger Loki, eight years ago, turning blue and thinking only of the savage tales Asgard told of them. Then he thought of an Aesir Loki, believing, spreading those stories – and he wanted to throw up. He stopped thinking about it.

“Odin… saw me like that,” Loki said. She almost seemed to be talking to herself now. “I made him explain. I didn’t,” she hesitated, “take it well. I actually yelled at him, and he went into the Odinsleep, and the next time I saw him– well. You know what happened.”

“What happened?” Býleistr asked, apparently entranced in the story and not thinking of the horrors that came from it. Well, he was young.

Loki looked down. “I killed myself,” she admitted.

Býleistr frowned. “That’s… but you’re here.”

“I am,” Loki said. “Death doesn’t seem to stick for me, as much as I had… anyway. Thor is my adoptive brother.”

“Hi,” said Thor, with a wave.

“Odin _stole_ you from Jötunheim,” Helblindi said. He tried to keep his rage cold, because he wasn’t sure who or what exactly he was mad for.

“He wouldn’t have used that word,” Loki said. “But yes. I don’t know why he thought taking Laufey’s abandoned son would help him with peace, but I suppose I don’t really know anything about Odin.”

Thor sighed loudly. Loki whacked him on the shoulder.

“When you found me,” she told Helblindi, or maybe Býleistr, “that was after the last time I died. The third time.”

“How did you die?” Býleistr asked, and immediately covered his mouth with a hand. Helblindi flicked him with a finger.

Loki winced. “Thanos,” she said. “Not by disintegration. He killed me personally.”

Thor looked away.

“Why wouldn’t you just tell us this from the start?” Býleistr asked. “You met our _mom_.”

“I did tell her, when I arrived here,” Loki said. “She already knew. I didn’t tell you because… I don’t know. I was the god of lies. And you guys _are_ just teenagers, who I’d never met before – why would I reveal my whole terrible backstory to you?”

“Loki,” said Thor, returning his gaze to his sister. “Are you going to stay here?”

“It’s not like there’s an Asgard to return to,” Loki said, which wasn’t a yes or no. “If you want me back, brother, I’ll go, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not if you still mean to resettle on Midgard.”

“Stark suggested a floating city above Midgard,” Thor said. “But you’re right. The governments of Earth won’t accept you as readily as I had.”

“Why doesn’t Midgard like you?” Býleistr asked.

Loki winced. “I sort of… I tried to take over the place? I think? It’s all very– I don’t really understand my reasoning anymore. Thanos’s control over me was… confusing. I might have been in the middle of a psychotic break still.”

She sounded like she was making excuses, just badly. Helblindi decided that he didn’t want to know.

“Your… biological mother is here,” Thor said, “isn’t she?”

Loki closed her eyes. “Yes.”

Thor visibly struggled for words before settling on: “If you stay here – I’d still like you to visit. You’re welcome in Asgard even if Earth disagrees.”

Loki sighed. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll… we’ll figure something out, Thor. But I need to stay on Jötunheim for a while. There’s things I… I need to figure out who I am. As a Jötunn.”

“That’s fine,” Thor said. He turned to Helblindi and Býleistr. “It is good to meet you,” he said awkwardly. “I know I haven’t been… I haven’t treated Jötnar as I should have, in the past. I was ignorant, but that’s not an excuse.”

Helblindi and Bý exchanged glances, the shock on both of their faces too evident for Hel’s comfort.

“That’s…” Bý hesitated – even he was too cautious to forgive Thor outright. Everyone knew of the man’s at least former bloodlust for the Jötnar; it was only eight years ago when he’d led a party straight to Laufey’s door to challenge him. “Thanks.”

An uncomfortable silence, and then:

“Oh!” Loki said, shifting abruptly from solemn to excited. “Thor, I have something I think is _really_ going to excite you.”

Thor smiled carefully. “Yeah…?”

Loki pulled out Baby Jormungandr from the pocket of the coat she’d given to Thor. “Look at him!” she said, like a proud mother.

“A snake,” said Thor in wonder. “Is it– it’s not going to kill me?”

“No,” Loki said. “And I wish you would stop spreading that story. It’s not like our childhood was full of _just_ my violence. You do remember when I was eleven and you pushed me into a lake, remember?”

“I wasn’t meaning to kill you,” Thor argued.

“Neither was I!” Loki said. “What kind of eight year old kills people? I was just playing a trick on you. It barely hurt, it was just a stab wound.”

“Ymir,” Helblindi said. “You _are_ siblings.”

Thor and Loki argued about the dynamics of their childhood murder attempts for the next twenty minutes.

/fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmmm hope you guys liked this! i have a poll tho. i want to write another loki_fic but i'm not sure if i should do the "loki is told he's a jotunn as a child" fic or the kid loki fic. thoughts???
> 
> for the record, miss angrboda is back at the bar her uncle works at and has loki's #. good 4 them

**Author's Note:**

> would love to hear your thoughts (aka comments or messages or anything. my tumblr is timetrees.tumblr.com)


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